Sorry, I hadn't put this up before now! Hope you enjoy. New Year's should be the next chapter. Much love!
We are the angry and the desperate,
The hungry, and the cold,
We are the ones who kept quiet,
And always did what we were told.
But we've been sweating while you slept so calm,
In the safety of your home.
We've been pulling out the nails that hold up
Everything you've known.
Prayer of the refugee
For a moment, I'm startled by the sounds of crying before I realize that it's Melanthe. Victoria quiets her quickly with the sound of her voice. I roll over in the bed we're sharing and see Melanthe sucking at Victoria's small breasts.
"I'm sorry she woke you," Victoria apologizes.
"It's okay," I assure her as I watch Melanthe suck. I've never had a baby in the house, so the whole thing kind of mesmerizes me. In the Districts, it's common for women to breastfeed for as long as possible. It's difficult to come by food, so the longer one can feed a child through breastmilk-the better. But ultimately, it comes down to opportunity and chance. Women have to go back to work quickly to help their families, so they feed when they can and substitute when they can't. It's a hard line. By now, Victoria can only feed her at night-the rest of the time, she's taken over the nets since the older Melanthe is too old to make it out there anymore. Instead, she weaves ropes together and watches the baby.
Victoria looks up at me as she cradles the dark head closer to her breast, "I'm glad we're here with you."
I know what she means. The rebellion is days away from starting-slated to happen between one and three weeks from now. I put my hand over hers. "I'm glad you're here too."
It had been too long since I'd seen them both. Melanthe wasn't even crawling last time I saw her-and now she's walking and talking some. It's a miracle that they have both survived.
I roll back over to sleep, thinking about the siblings I lost-and how close the chances of dying are to Melanthe each day. How can Victoria breathe with the crushing sense of terror at what could go wrong? My brother died when he was three, he had been fine until then. My cousins made it to four and seven before dying, and my little sister died from a beating my mother took.
There's a very thin line between life and death, and Victoria walks it every day with Melanthe. I love them both so much, but i don't know if I could do it-if I could raise a child in this current world and worry that it would starve or be killed.
It's a long time before I can go back to sleep.
It's not quite dawn when Victoria and I make our way out of bed. Melanthe is still fast asleep, oblivious to us as we make a mush for breakfast. Today is our hunting day.
We shove our feet into supple leather boots and head out. Today, Alaric, Victoria and I are allowed to hunt while our families go about their regular jobs. Alaric and I as the youngest of our families, are always given the benefit to get out of the mines or blacksmith shop for fresh air-but there's more to it this time. We're the less conspicuous choice.
At the entry to the woods, we await the guards who will take us out. Victoria unbuttons the top two buttons of her shirt, exposing the pale skin of her collarbone. The soldiers keep looking at her in that hungry way. Jackson joins up with us, his face smudged with coal.
"You don't have to do this," I whisper to Victoria. Her shoulders are back, her breasts prominent as she smiles at one of the soldiers in the distance.
She doesn't stop smiling, "How else are we going to distract them?" She has a point, but I still don't like it.
The bows are passed out to each representative of a family, the odd revolver sent with each group in case of an animal attack. Then we're released to hunt. The guards stand there by the weapon building that we need to get into.
We circle around, leaving Victoria and Jackson behind.
After about five minutes, we've kept as cautiously and closely as we can to the back of the building that holds the hunting bows and a few more revolvers. We wait for Victoria to show.
She walks into view with her head held high and her long red hair tied up behind her. The soldiers watch her as she moves forward, graceful and lithe. "Can we talk?" She asks the guy in charge-he's about twenty or twenty-one.
There's a shrill bird whistle-the signal
He motions for the others to go, and they drift off into the woods where Jackson will watch and signal when they're far enough away. He won't signal again till they're headed back.
Victoria looks up at the soldier with blazing eyes. "I need some money."
The peacekeeper runs his hand down her arm, looking at her intently. "How much?"
"I could kill him from here," I whisper. Alaric pushes my bow down.
"Don't," it's all he says.
"I need to get my baby some warm winter clothes," she shifts back and forth on her feet for a moment and then drops the bow. She undoes another button of her shirt. "I know you want me," I can hear her from here. I shove my fist into my mouth to keep myself from screaming.
When I look back, she's in his arms. Her legs are wrapped around his waist and her hands are in his hair. They're against a tree, and I see her pulling herself tighter to him moaning, and making noise to cover our sounds.
We move forward quickly and open the small armoury. We carefully get to the back of the room and dig into the back boxes. Usually the soldiers don't do a deep inventory. They just check the stuff in the front room. We dig through the back boxes and remove three rifles, two shotguns and five pistols-along with 100 rounds each. Knives, we have plenty of at home. We grab up as many bows tossed in the back as we can, knowing the next big inventory isn't for another month.
We hurry out silently, and prop the door how it was. Victoria and the soldier are locked together still. We can't move too far without risking the soldiers finding us, so we wait for the signal they're coming back.
I watch in rage as he moves his hands under Victoria's shirt. It goes on for several more minutes, before I'm able to catch her eye. "Stop," she begs him.
"What?" His voice is husky.
She unwraps her legs, and he puts her down, "I…" She blushes crimson. "I don't want to get pregnant again, can you wait about two weeks-I won't be fertile then."
He shifts a little uncomfortably, "And I have to hunt. I don't want people to see...I don't want my baby to have it worse because of us." She says it like it's some secret affair.
"Two weeks from now," he says. "I'll see you in my barracks at midnight. You come, you get the money."
"Okay," she buttons the three buttons of her shirt up before picking up her bow and heading into the woods.
Soon there's another shrill bird call, and we sneak away and around. Victoria is flushed when we meet up with her and Jackson. We walk two miles north until we find the place we're to store the weapons-in a hollowed out log. We pull out the oiled skins and wrap the weapons carefully, before we go off to hunt.
We make the lake by noonday with our kills. Most people don't come out this far for some reason, but we do. The boys clean the kills, getting rid of unnecessary weight as Victoria and I catch fish with our hands in our underwear.
We start a fire and roast the fish as we sit with the boys. "Oh come on Emera, are you going to sulk the rest of the day?"
"Why not?" I huff out. "You had to proposition him," I spit out.
"And it's not like he's going to get anything else from me. If I had to screw him for those guns, I'd have done it." She takes a bite out of her fish.
Jackson looks at her, "Would you have?"
"Yes," she looks at him fiercely. "It was just making out, not a big deal. Besides, in two weeks I do plan to give him a nice little gift." She smiles wickedly, and touches Jackson's forehead just above his nose. "A bullet or arrow, right there."
We enjoy our feast and then swim for hours, enjoying our freedom as kids.
Our kills are laid out in the sun-the rest of our allotment for the month and possibly a little extra that will be confiscated by the soldiers when we give them our rations.
We're just getting out when we see the black bear coming forward to our kills. I move slowly, threading the bow with an arrow and take aim. I breathe out and release the arrow at the same time Jackson does-each of us pierces an eye.
Alaric moves forward fast as the bear struggles feebly and sinks his blade through the brain-finishing her off faster. Then we realize, we're stuck with a lot more food than we have rations for.
Rations are small pieces of paper that allot how many pounds you can bring in. The average amount of rations per family is eight 5lb ration cards. For each card you turn in, you can bring five pounds of meat home. You can save up as much ration cards as you like, but you can't bring in more food than you have rations for. If you're careful, you can sell of your ration cards for much needed things.
Each of us have about 10lbs of ration cards left-which we've already mostly filled. The best we can hope for is that the guards might pay us for some of the meat or we sneak it in.
We cut the hide off, either way we're allowed to keep that and it'll make an excellent blanket this winter. We cut up the meat, choosing a couple of good steaks for our own and then separating the rest of the meat. We take two leg bones so that we can make needles from them.
After all is said and done, we're about 70lbs of flesh over our allotment. But we really can't leave it out here to rot.
It's about sunset, when we're approaching the fences. We've been arguing the past hour over the risk of bringing the meat in. But we're cut short when a soldier appears in front of us. He's about eighteen, tall and darker skinned.
He shifts his rifle on his shoulder, "What happened?"
Jackson smiles, "Bear tried to take our kills...so we had to defend them. We're hoping that maybe we might can get some thanks for it."
The man looks from each of us to the heavy bags of meat. "How much over are you?"
"Seventy pounds," Alaric shifts his feet restlessly.
He looks at us each for a few long moments, his eyes lingering longer on Victoria. He opens his pocket and pulls out some ration cards and counts them. He grabs Victoria's hand and puts the rations cards in her hands. "There's fourteen cards there, enough to take the whole lot in." He makes her hand close around the rations. "I don't want to ever see you bartering with Soldier Wentworth again. He's no good. Got it?"
She stares at him a moment, before she nods her head. I take note of his name on his uniform-Eckler-before he turns on his heel and walks away.